Welcome to Sewageville 93950Pacific Grove has numerous raw sewer spills
almost every year, but almost nothing has been done to prevent them.

This is a detail from the mural, showing a brown sea & deplicting
life in Pacific Grove early in the 1900's. Sewage from Pacific Grove was
designed to be dumped directly into Monterey Bay at the time the system
was designed.
The mural is about one hundred feet from the operating sewer pumping
plant (Below) that still pumps sewage to this day. It is now pumped to
a treating facility, unless there is backup, in that case raw sewage is
illegally dumped into Monterey Bay.

This is a Feb. 2000 picture of the sewage pumping plant near the bottom
of 15th Street in Pacific Grove. In the background you can see the 7 Gables
Inn. When there is a clog the raw (Untreated) sewage is illegally &
directly dumped into Monterey Bay through the outlet pipe (Below). This
is about 200 yards from Lover's Point. Often raw sewage flows down the
street gutters & flows into the bay through one of the many gutter
water outlet pipes. There is one that is about 4 feet wide (Second picture
below).

The blue sewer outlet pipe releases the clog pressure. The untreated
sewage then flows into the bay. The gutter water pipe is for
gutter water that flows into the bay 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
(Bottom of 15th Street near the 7 Gables Inn). There is no alarm system
to detect spills. The city completely relies on citizens to alert them
of spills. The beaches are supposed to be posted 'No Swimming,' but most
of the time they are not. Of four recent sewer spills (One more than 70,000
gallons), in four months (1999-2000), Lover's Point beach was observed
to be posted only once. The County claimed that someone was taking down
the signs. Perhaps a real estate agent concerned about property values?

This is the four foot wide overflow pipe at Lover's Point at the bottom
of Forest Ave. We think that it was the original sewer pipe when sewer
was dumped directly into the bay instead of being treated first. In the
background you can see the Grand View Inn at the bottom of Grand Ave.
The pipe directly dumps perhaps hundreds of thousands of gallons of
gutter water into the bay each year.